


forgive me for what i told you (my heart makes a fool of me)

by EmAndFandems



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Apologies, Crowley Submits to the Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known (Good Omens), Crying, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Love Confessions, M/M, Repressed Aziraphale (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:20:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24253504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmAndFandems/pseuds/EmAndFandems
Summary: Crowley's been waiting so long. What happens when he decides he can't wait any longer?
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 86
Kudos: 383





	forgive me for what i told you (my heart makes a fool of me)

**Author's Note:**

> As usual this was first posted to my tumblr @lazarusemma, come give me a shout! The title of this fic is from Queen's "Sail Away Sweet Sister."

“What would you like tonight?” Crowley says, flicking through menu screens on his phone, and Aziraphale smiles.

“Oh, you know what I like,” he says. Crowley seems to glance up for a moment but then his focus is back on the screen again, so maybe Aziraphale imagined it. “Order anything.”

There's a quiet in the room. It should be comfortable. For a little while it is, and then Aziraphale notices that Crowley is shifting in his seat, and then he realizes Crowley is trying to say something.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” says Crowley immediately. “Nothing, forget it. Never mind. Nothing.”

Aziraphale raises an eyebrow. “Well, now I insist.”

Crowley sighs. He stares at the ceiling for a few minutes while he gathers his words and his wits, so Aziraphale waits, and then at last Crowley asks, “What is this?”

“I— I don't understand.” Aziraphale watches Crowley for a hint of what he means. Crowley is tense, almost shaking with the effort of remaining still, and it makes Aziraphale's shoulders tight with wondering what's gotten Crowley upset. “What is... what?”

“This!” Crowley waves a hand through the air, then balls it into a fist and shoves it back into his lap. “Everything! Us! Whatever! What is it? What— how's— what are we, angel?”

Aziraphale blinks. “You know,” he says quietly.

Crowley makes an anguished noise. Aziraphale flinches.

“I don’t, though,” says Crowley slowly, “is the thing. Let’s assume I don’t. We’ve been assuming so long the other way, yeah? We do this bit where I put my heart out to get squashed and you, out of the infinite mercy of your grace and whatnot, kindly don’t squash it, but it’s— we never— you don’t— I can’t... Aziraphale... Please just answer the question.”

What would be nice, Aziraphale thinks, is if he could remember how to breathe.

This isn’t supposed to happen. This isn’t how they do things. They fit together so nicely now, without all the rules in the way and the shouldn’ts and the don’ts. They make plans and have dinners and sometimes (once) hold hands. What they  _ don’t  _ do is talk about it.

Aziraphale’s heart decides to get in on this action, and skips a couple of beats.

“The question,” he repeats, knowing full well that he’s stalling, and knowing that Crowley knows, and knowing that he’s being unfair.

Crowley does not grace this with a response.

Why did he have to go and spoil their lovely evening like this? They were all set to have a perfectly wonderful time and then— this. Aziraphale twists his fingers together and looks at the bookshelf to his left rather than at Crowley. The old titles he’s read fifteen times over are not as interesting as he tries to make them seem. Crowley is still waiting and Aziraphale is extremely aware of it. He opens his mouth to give an answer and his throat closes up.

“Angel?” says Crowley, finally, when it’s clear Aziraphale won’t be saying anything.

“Sorry,” Aziraphale gasps, around the horrible tightness. “I’m sorry.”

“What’re you apologizing for?” Crowley leans in now, sets a hand on Aziraphale’s knee, makes his pulse jitter even more frantically. “Look, you alright?”

Aziraphale gives an attempt at a shrug. “I ought to be, yes.”

“Not what I asked,” Crowley says. “I said, are you alright?”

Before Aziraphale knows what’s happening he shakes his head. Instantly, Crowley pulls back.

“Sorry,” he mutters, half-rising. “Forget it, I’ll just—”

“Don’t go!” The thought is so unbearable that Aziraphale is actually able to get the words out. “Please. Crowley, I'm sorry, I'm— please stay. I'll…”

Crowley looks at him, really looks. There is an ache behind his eyes that cuts Aziraphale to the quick. “Angel, I just— I can do it, long as you want. Whatever I can get, y’know. S’just that I wanted... something. Mm. Answers, I guess, for once, for a bloody change. I tried so hard to be patient but I've mucked that up now. So either you tell me something that answers my question, and I stay here for whatever it is you want to give me, or you can tell me it’s no use. But I need to hear it. One way or the other, Aziraphale, it’s been— it’s been so long and I can’t, I just can’t go any longer without asking, I—”

He breaks off. His eyes are shining with unshed tears and the sparkle of their gold is so beautiful. He’s so beautiful. Aziraphale wrestles his body into some semblance of composure, enough to inhale, enough to maybe form words.

“Crowley,” he says. And then he says it again, because that much he’s sure about. “Crowley.”

Aziraphale swallows. Crowley is watching him, like a man overboard waiting to see if they’ve got any lifeboats on the ship, hoping to be pulled from his own wreck. It is so hard to speak. It is so hard to break this habit of silence.

“I don’t want you to go,” he tells Crowley, and he tries to put all the meaning possible into the sentence. It’s not enough and he knows it, so he adds, “Ever. I don’t ever want you to go.”

And that’s better; that’s closer. Crowley lets out a little half-sob of a noise, a gasp in reverse. The first exhale of a drowning victim. He is still waiting.

“It’s... hard.” Aziraphale tries desperately not to look away. Their eyes are locked and it’s sending prickles of heat through his face, up the back of his neck, down the palms of his hands. His body shouldn’t react this way to such things; it wasn’t made to do these things; he isn’t supposed to be able to blush, or to want to. He blushes anyway. He holds eye contact anyway. “It’s hard to— to say these things. To find words and to... tell them to you. I thought you knew.”

Aziraphale hoped Crowley would step in at this point. He doesn’t. Aziraphale forges onward.

“There’s never— I always... that is, you were— and I. Well.” He laughs at himself, then, just a little, because really this is absurd. He is an angel, and very old besides, and he should have more dignity than this. “This is going spectacularly badly, isn’t it? What I am trying to say is that I— yes. The answer is yes. To everything you wanted an answer to. Crowley, yes, a hundred times yes. I'm sorry you had to ask. I should’ve told you. I shouldn’t have made you doubt and made you wait and made you miserable. I'm sorry, I'm—”

And then he’s crying, which is a surprise.

Crowley stammers through a few syllables that don’t form any coherent words before he crouches beside Aziraphale. “Hey,” he says, in a gentler tone than Aziraphale’s ever heard from him, except perhaps in a Scottish accent in a child’s bedroom. “Angel— Aziraphale— no, look, I'm the one who should be sorry here, it’s alright. You’re alright. I pushed you again and I knew I shouldn’t—”

Aziraphale shakes his head and says, between the embarrassing hiccups that come from bursting into tears, “You were right, I've treated you abominably, it’s my fault—”

“It’s not, it’s theirs, please don’t cry—”

“Crowley, I'm so dreadfully sorry—”

“Stop apologizing when I've made you cry—”

“I love you.”

It’s this that gets Crowley to stop interrupting him. He looks rather as though he’s been struck. “Oh,” he says, a little foolishly. “Okay, then. Good to hear.”

Aziraphale wipes at his face. The words are out. He’s said them.  _ He  _ did. Him! He says them again to prove it. Crowley is just as dumbfounded the second time. Aziraphale tries it again; for scientific purposes, you understand. The results are the same, but he deems this inconclusive, and repeats them until Crowley’s screwing up his face and burying it in Aziraphale’s chest from his position on the floor.

“Too much,” he says, sounding through all that fabric as though he might be crying too now. “Pity’s sake, angel, there’s only so much I can take at once. Give my heart a minute to quit its pounding.”

Aziraphale runs a hand along Crowley’s back, long and slow and soothing. “Is this an acceptable answer?” he asks. “Am I— Is this what you wanted to hear?”

Crowley’s torso shakes like he’s laughing, or maybe crying, one of those things the human body does when it’s holding too much to contain. “Yeah, angel,” he says, holding on tightly. “Yeah, this is good.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment and let me know what you thought!


End file.
